Near Field Communication (NFC) a short-range wireless connectivity technology having various standards such as Ecma-340 and ISO/IEC 18092. NFC technology uses magnetic field induction to enable communication between devices that are either touched together, or brought within a few centimeters of each other. NFC technology may be integrated with various devices such as mobile phones. Various applications, for example a credit card, may be securely provisioned to an NFC enabled mobile phone such that customers can pay for goods or services by simply waving their mobile phone at a point-of-sale reader. One of the many uses cases for NFC is to enable transit applications. In a transit application use case, a subscriber would utilize their mobile phones to board metro trains, buses, trams or other modes of transport.
A problem arises however when the mobile phone's battery is too low to power up the mobile phone. A user who must use their NFC enabled mobile phone at an NFC reader to board a mode of transport may not be able to make the transaction due to the low battery power.
One solution proposed to address this problem is to use the power derived from the NFC reader to enable the NFC circuitry of the mobile phone. However, testing has shown that there are many use cases where adequate power cannot be derived from the NFC field alone to power up the NFC circuitry and the other needed mobile phone components, such as a SIM card or SD Card. The size of the NFC coil in the mobile phone and the reader, along with the proximity of the two devices to each other can significantly affect the power derived from the field.
Operators desire NFC applications such as ticketing to work even when a mobile phone's battery is insufficient to power up the handset. Thus, what is needed and does not exist today is a solution to allow an NFC application to work when a mobile phone's battery is too low to power up the mobile phone.